


Blood, Thicker Than Water

by TheJunkiestToon



Category: Captain America (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BAMF Hermione Granger, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Powerful Hermione
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 08:39:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12361863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheJunkiestToon/pseuds/TheJunkiestToon
Summary: A Stark, A Carter, A Granger: Hermione (Stark-Carter) Granger discovers the family legacy and learns how to shape her pain into heroism. Starring Edwin and Ana Jarvis. Exploring the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Hermione-centric. 1st in the A Stark, A Carter, A Granger series. Pre-Iron Man.





	Blood, Thicker Than Water

**Author's Note:**

> *This is very AU: I am merely playing with Marvel Cinematic Universe and Harry Potter and the Queen of all Queens, Hermione Granger. This will explore the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Hermione-centric. I obviously do not own Harry Potter or the Marvel Cinematic Universe--sadly.  
> *This is crossposted at FFnet.

A Stark, A Carter, A Granger

_What is your first memory?_

It’s a question Hermione’s therapist asks her.

 

It’s a good question, Hermione supposes: we are human beings composed of carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen, the protein of our filaments intertwined with cellular consciousness—but further than that, our _identity_ , which Hermione equates with _soul_ , is a hodgepodge mosaic of our different choices, our different impressions, our different recollections.

 

So here is what she knows, here is Hermione’s hodgepodge mosaic: she doesn’t remember anything until the age of five, and then suddenly there is a blooming of memory, bursting in kaleidoscope fashion: a woman who Hermione calls Mother who is not her mother, a man who Hermione calls Father who is not her father—they had other names before, they tell Hermione, that she must not use; before that, the man that Hermione calls Father is confused by the “computers” and the “WorldWideWeb” and he searches over and over for someone called _Stark, Stark, Stark, Stark, Howard Stark, Hermione Stark, Stark, Stark,_ and he types the letters in over and over, hitting the keys so hard he breaks one, and then he finally searches for _jobs, open work_ ; before that, Hermione remembers the woman she calls Mother crying at the sight of the shiny buildings and convertibles and the music with too many beat-beats, and saying _England 1990, 1990,_ in a question, not a statement; and finally, before that, Hermione remembers blue light and golden tendrils and a tunneling wormhole that burned with embers.

 

And before that, nothing.

 

So this is the start of Hermione.

 

Hermione Granger, as the woman she calls Mother and the man she calls Father, tell her she must be named (though when Hermione tastes the words, they don’t roll right in her mouth): her tongue wants to clip at the roof of her mouth, or roll two syllables long then short, but _Hermione_ seems to fit just fine.

 

“Daughter of Helen of Troy,” the woman she calls Mother says, wistfully. “An inside joke your father made. You would understand, darling, if time was different.”

 

If _time_ was different, not if times were different. Hermione makes a note of this, remembers.

 

See, after that wormhole, everything Hermione sees she remembers. Eidetic memory, her therapist calls it. Her therapist is especially intrigued by this, as most of her patients cannot pinpoint the exact start of their memories. But Hermione sees the tangible color of her past until before the wormhole, where it melts into black tar. The therapist links this memory to Hermione’s “problems.”

 

(Though of course Hermione doesn’t say “wormhole” or “time” or “different Mother and Father” in her sessions, since her new Mother and Father were very clear on those points. She uses codes, like “new house,” “adopted,” and “I think that is all for this session, thank you.”)

 

Hermione’s “problems” are many and grow with each year:

 

When she is five she has a recurring nightmare of being sucked into black tar that glows with gold threads and tunnels her into the rings of Saturn; she doesn’t sleep more than four hours a night for two months. This is when Hermione first meets her therapist: the man she calls Father carries her, wrapped in his coat, into the therapist’s office. They stay long after office hours are over.

 

When she is six she grows distrustful of this Mother and Father. This Mother is kind and this Father achingly gentle, but she doesn’t like to be left alone with them. She begs to go to school and is enrolled in accelerated programs so that there will be more space between her and the two of them. She learns about genetics and sees the other children with their parents. Then the Nature program on the television features cuckoo birds, and Hermione is finally able to pinpoint that this is what she feels like, a cuckoo bird in a robin’s nest, and when she finally screams this at them, hurling her dinner plate at the floor, she points out this Mother’s sleek ginger hair and their shared blue eyes. Hermione shares none of their features. Hermione is a painter’s swatch of similar color: cream skin, caramel hair and eyes. Little Brioche, this Father calls her. So when Hermione compares her delicate smallness and her mass of caramel hair, already frizzing a two good inches from her elbows, her breath catches from the unfairness. Hermione doesn’t belong here and every cell of her has a memory of it that she just can’t reach.

 

This Father looks at this Mother before burying his face in his hands. “Hermione,” he says, “Little Brioche, darling, we need to tell you something.”

 

This Mother stands up from her chair so hard it screeches against the dining floor. She is breathing hard. The glint of the light picks up the red in her hair. She stalks from the room without a glance at Hermione’s shattered plate.

 

This Father leads Hermione to the back of the house, where there is a very thin straggle of land with peas and pumpkins struggling in the soil (their “victory garden,” as they call it). He brushes aside some vines and digs with his fingers until he unearths a little metal box. It’s locked; the lock looks expensive. Hermione files this away for later.

 

They bring the locked box into the dining room where the box is unlocked and its contents spill over the table. Hermione handles a delicate leather wallet with _EJ_ stitched on the side. She opens it up to find an ID with this Father’s picture and the name _Edwin Jarvis_ on the side. And another for _Ana Jarvis_ , and this Mother’s picture. The dates on both pictures are 1958. And there is another picture, a photograph with well-loved edges, of a beautiful dark-haired woman with Hermione’s nose and the silhouette of a dark-haired mustached man leaning toward her. They are both wrapped in furs, and there is snow around them, and there in the background, smiling at the two figures, is the new Father. Hermione flips it over. It’s labeled, _H & P &_ _J_ , _1952._

 

“That was taken in Russia,” the man Hermione knows as new Father and Edwin Jarvis. His eyes have gone soft. “That was a year before you came along.”

 

Even at six, Hermione can do maths, and she knows that the maths don’t add up. But her brain snags on something: “You’re Jarvis?”

 

The man’s face lights up like a cotton-film bulb. “You remember?”

 

“No,” Hermione says, a bit torn at his now-crestfallen face, so she adds, “But it feels right: like Hermione. Jarvis.” It does.

 

Jarvis ducks his head, suddenly shy. “I was there when you were born. Hell,” he taps the photo, “I was there before you were born. I watched your parents fall in love. I watched them fall in love with you. I loved you, too. I used to take care of you, change your nappies. No one could put you to sleep like me, not even your mum.” He is so proud of that fact.

 

Hermione looks down at that photo, at those happy incandescent faces. “What…happened?”

 

Jarvis’s face clouds over; Hermione is a bit taken aback. It’s the most mood changes in rapid succession she’s ever seen on this gentle man. She files this into her brain, too.

 

“War. War happened. And then the War ended but it didn’t really end, not for your mum or your dad. There is Evil, Hermione. True Evil,” and he says it like a proper noun, and Hermione read that proper nouns indicate specifics in particular, an individual. She wonders what individual he means. She is focused so much on this that she almost misses the last part: “Your parents fought it. And then you were targeted. You, A

na, me, we should be dead. Dead. But there was a miracle: a machine malfunctioned and space opened up and there was time, and we fell through. Some Evil fell through, too. No clue why or how. They could still be after us, you. And we ended up here, in England. No record of a Howard Stark ever existing. It’s a different world, this world. With the Spice Rack girls and ridiculous boards with wheels and pocket calculators, though to be fair I’m really appreciative of the last one—“

 

They laugh over that one, mostly because Jarvis looks so wistful and Hermione can already feel the burn of tears. The man and woman in the picture could be dead. Could be old. Could have five little girls that look just like Hermione and so they don’t miss her one bit.

 

It’s so much, it’s just so much, all at once, Hermione feels like she will explode—

 

Then Jarvis asks, “Do you want to hear of your mum and dad?”

 

And Jarvis tells of her of three soldiers: a captain of men, flag-wrapped and shield-sworn; an inventor of hope; and of a red-lipped agent who loved Hermione very much. He tells her the name of her parents, her real parents: Howard Stark, Peggy Carter. She rolls the names with her tongue and they fit. _Howard, Peggy. Stark, Carter. Stark-Carter._ _Hermione Stark, Hermione Carter. Hermione Stark-Carter_.

  
Hermione feels a pit in her stomach, an unexplainable grief, a pit that swallows up her stomach and lungs and esophagus pipe, and it feels like an expanding and collapsing, and Hermione remembers learning of black holes—it feels like there is a black hole in her chest, a squeezing of her body’s matter and all that is Hermione. It’s loss on a cellular level. She is distantly aware of the china rattling, light bulbs shattering. The rest of Hermione remembers what she can’t, and all that is left is this squeezing strangulation—

 

The front door almost bursts off its hinges, it is swung open so hard: the new Mother—Ana Jarvis, a distant part of her mind reminds her—crashes through. The shiny ginger hair is gone, dyed brunette so quickly the dye still sticks to the scalp, and the hair looks like it has been permed to within an inch of its life. She looks exactly—exactly—like a blue-eyed, fluffier version of Hermione.

 

Hermione bursts into tears, and is quickly enfolded into Jarvis’ arms, then Ana’s. And locked within their grip, she feels the black hole within her start to subside. She may be a cuckoo bird, a daughter of a Howard and Peggy from another time, but these two are cuckoobirds, too. And they have a cuckoobird nest, together. And so Hermione renames her cuckoo birds: Jarvis to Daddy, Ana to Mama. And yes, of course Hermione will remember this moment, but beyond that she will treasure this very moment. On bad days she will take out this memory and study it like a seashell.

 

Then things are better, for a time.

 

But when she is seven Hermione starts lighting things on fire. On accident.

 

The accident part doesn’t help much when she accidentally burns their small house down. Hermione is grounded from all books, but Mama simply looks at Daddy and says, “Get a house with a yard this time. A swingset. Some trees. Something she can play in.”

 

So they move to a new house in London with a tree in the backyard that they carve their old initials and new initials into: _H S-C, HG; EJ, EG; AJ, AG._ And Mama grows her victory garden even though the victory has long-since been won, and both Mama and Daddy study to become dentists, a respectable enough job. And the fires stop.

 

The black hole in Hermione stops for a time, too. Sometimes it flares up in small moments, like when a stranger asks for the time, and Hermione is torn between two responses she can’t define. When Hermione is discovered to have secretly strapped four wristwatches to her arm, each precise to the second, she is taken to the therapist again. The therapist mandates family therapy, so Daddy and Mama come, too.

 

But even Daddy and Mama, pros as they are at secreting their 1950 life into code, can’t find a way to participate without it feeling like a flubber of a lie, so the therapists visits stop. Instead, Daddy and Mama institute a “family council,” where no one is allowed dinner or bed until they get all their truth out.

 

Hermione has a lot of truths to get out, they discover. But Hermione is surprised to discover they have just as many truths. Daddy hates his wardrobe. Hates it. “Dentists are lazy slobs,” he says. “They just don’t give a damn about anything but teeth.” (In the old photograph, Hermione remembers his crisp thrice-ironed collar, pristine three-piece suit, and red-on-a-gold pattern silk tie.) Mama loves the freedom in showing clavicle and cleavage and thigh, but even she thinks the miniskirts are too much. And they both can’t handle the fried food and the loud music and the knowledge that all their cigarettes ate little holes in their lungs. They both keep little pistols beside their bed, Hermione learns. Sometimes Mama comes to watch Hermione when she is sleeping because she has had a dream that the Evil men have come to take Hermione away. Sometimes Daddy stays awake cleaning his gun.

 

And Hermione, they learn, caused those fires when she got mad or sad or lonely and her black hole burned. They also learn of the books that float to her when they are on too high of a shelf, and the one time she turned the TV on by pointing at it and the screen shattered. They learn all these things when Hermione is seven, so Hermione thinks they—even they, cuckoo birds from another world, another time—shouldn’t be as surprised as they are at the letter she receives for her 11th birthday, addressed to _Miss HG, H S-C, main floor, family library, pink bed._ Her invitation is to a place for other cuckoo birds, a place called Hogwarts.

 

Hermione swirls the word in her mouth and smiles at the taste.

**Author's Note:**

> *So the Jarvis' have adopted little Hermione Stark-Carter. LOVE Ana and Edwin.  
> *I plan to delve further into Howard/Peggy and explore Hermione’s entrance into the MCU, starting with the Iron Man film. Thank you for reading—your thoughts are most appreciated. Please review! ☺  
> *Though this is crossposted at FFNet, I will update here weekly.


End file.
